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I feel profound pleasure in bringing out this report for which I had
to go from pillar to post to make it a reality. This work reflects
contributions of many people with whom I had long discussions. I
must first of all, express my heartiest gratitude to Mr. Arpit Sahu
for providing me with all guidance, being my mentor, to complete
this report.

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‘rand dilution is the weakening of a brand though its overuse. This
frequently happens as a result of ill-judged brand extension. Price cutting
that increases volumes but moves a brand down-market can similarly
damage a brand.

More and more firms realize that some of their most valuable assets are
the brand names associated with their products or services. Creating,
maintaining, and enhancing the strength of those brands has become a
key management imperative.

In a study, the patterns of brand dilution depending upon whether

consumers owned the Mobile brand being extended. When low-priced
extensions were introduced, dilution occurred with owners of a prestige
brand (e.g. Nokia, Sony) but not with owners of a non-prestige brand (e.g.,
Videocon, Micromax, LAVA) and the cheap Chinese phones.

An implication of these results is that even successful extensions can lead

to brand dilution because the basis of brand meaning may be different for
loyal users compared to non-loyal users. Loyal users have richer, more
developed knowledge structures of the brand and may have deeper
convictions regarding what is central to brand meaning than non -users.
Extensions may therefore be successful in attracting new users and
increasing sales, but at the same time these extensions may be perceived
to be inconsistent by loyal users and result in brand dilution with this group
of consumers.

Nowdays people are going towards the features rather than the ‘rand. Like
in the market Nokia share has decreased tremendously.

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Home-grown handset makers like Spice, Micromax and Karbonn captured
11%, 19% and 22 per cent respectively of the mobile phone market in India
in FY 2009-10, thanks to the burgeoning growth in the cellular telephony
due to features, they lack a name-brand OS and are the vast majority-more
than 85 per cent-of all the handsets in use today. Although there¶s some
price overlap with the smartphones, the majority of features phones retail
for less than 5000Rs, with some going for as little as 1000Rs.
These manufacturers had just 3-4 per cent market share in the previous
fiscal. These Indian brands strengthened their presence in the domestic
handset market in 2009-10, growing at the expense of multinationals like
Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

Nokia has their user friendliness, the rest for their multimedia features as
well as other functionalities but compared to other Mobile handset¶s Price,
‘rand, Style, Features²Dual Sims, Touch Screen.

Low prices for perceived high-end features. You get all ‘lackberry
lookalikes complete with trackball, and even dual-SIM phones, for Rs
5,000,so they tend to appeal not only to people on a tight budget, but also
to those who prefer basic services such as voice and SMS. These mobiles
are inexpensive and parents frequently buy feature phones for their
teenagers. The current mobile market has a close relationship with the
teenagers. As a trend, teenagers are more inclined to the newest gadgets
of any sort. Whenever a new multimedia or electronic gadget is launched-
just see the queue in any outlet-you will see a large number of youngsters
filing the crowd. Frankly speaking, youngsters are be coming tech-savvy
than ever. To be in the limelight or to showcase one's fashion quotient is
another reason for that growing popularity of mobile devices among the
youngsters.

Many feature phones can support rich immersive media, partly through the
use of application platform such as ‘REW and J2ME, which enable a wide
variety of downloadable apps, such as games which are easily available on
the internet nowdays.

These Low priced and Chinese mobile companies are using all the tactics
to retain their market, they are giving incentives to the retail shops to sell
their handsets, scratch cards and to keep it for display in their shops.

So it¶s a hard time in the coming years for the Multinational Companies to
keep a pace with the market and to release new featured handsets in the
market at much lower cost to retain their market in the Indian Mobile
Handset Market.